"The Sum of Its Parts" by Rev. Jillian Hankamer, 2/9/2025

A sermon for Northminster Church

Matthew 13: 23-43

In the fall of 2019, The Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News released a three-part investigative series about more than 700 people who’ve been sexually abused by Southern Baptist pastors, leaders, and volunteers over the past 20 years. If you haven’t read the articles, they’re heart-wrenching and infuriating. And they caused a firestorm.

             Multiple SBC leaders came out publicly to apologize and voice their sorrow, outrage, and newfound dedication to putting safeguards in place. A small group doubled down and lashed out at female pastors as critics suggest that having women in the leadership of the SBC might be helpful in healing and making sure such abuse never happens again. But most people asked why this discovery took so long and why it had to come from an outside source.

             A reminder of this bombshell is the realization for those of us who’re Baptist, but not Southern Baptist, that most people don’t know the difference. If there was ever a reason to require all Americans to take a Baptist History course, this story is it - if only that so people might understand that “Baptist” identifies over 50 different groups just in the United States. When I tell people I'm a Baptist pastor, I always follow it with “but not that kind of Baptist.”

 I don’t want people to see our church sign and automatically think we’re involved with something so hurtful. Something that will take years to fully uncover and begin to heal – if such a thing is even possible. I want it to be clear that we aren’t like them, that we’re the good kind of Baptists who have women pastors and accept the LGBTQ community. I’m not proud of it, but one of my prayers this week has been, “Please God, don’t let people lump us in with them.”

             This week’s passage includes Jesus’ command about judging others. These are verses you know well, as the idea of being “non-judgmental” or being someone who “doesn’t judge” has become commonplace culturally. Our old gym in St. Louis had the phrase “A judgment-free zone” plastered everywhere, which was both reassuring and slightly condescending. It’s trendy to “not be judgmental,” and for the most part, being accepting of others is a good thing, even the Christian way to live. But what’s missing when we flippantly tell people, “Don’t judge me!” is the necessity of self-critique.

             Jesus says, starting in verse 3,

“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?”

In their commentary on the Working Preacher Podcast, Rolph Jacobson, Kathryn Schifferdecker, and Craig Koester note that Jesus is alluding to the capacity for self-criticism as an integral part of the judgment process.^[1] I would add that this self-criticism must also be ongoing. Admitting you’ve fallen short of the grace of God and are an imperfect person is the place to start, but if it isn’t followed with the effort of honestly evaluating yourself and your motivations on a regular basis, are you growing in your faith? Let alone acting as a reliable source to judge others and help them grow?

             To be clear, Jesus isn’t saying that we’re to remove “no” or “that’s wrong” from our vocabulary. If we allow a ban on ever saying things that might be construed as disparaging or disapproving, if  we remove it from our relationships with others, we run the risk of “enabling destructive patterns.”^[2] As Kathryn Schifferdecker says so well, “Not judging anything or anybody really doesn’t take sin and evil seriously…Jesus is not a moral relativist…”^[3] meaning he’s not someone who would say, “to each their own,” or “who am I to judge?”  So the key for us is to ask ourselves what our role is in the dysfunction and, “recognizing our responsibility, to tend to what we see going on in others.”^[4] In other words, we must “be aware of [our] own stuff first,”^[5] then engage those around us about theirs.

             Christopher Moore, the New York Times bestselling author, writes wonderfully odd books. I’ve read several of them, but my favorite will always be one my dad recommended called Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. The story is a retelling of the life of Joshua by his best friend Biff, who is brought back from the dead to write a gospel that fills in some of the holes in the gospels. Biff does just that, telling stories of Joshua practicing raising lizards from the dead before trying to raise people,  learning from Buddhist monks about “the divine spark,” and other adventures that aren’t quite suitable for Sunday mornings.

             Lamb requires readers to have a sense of humor as it’s highly irreverent, but it interestingly tells the story of Christ, especially when it comes to this morning’s text from the Sermon on the Mount.

             Here’s what Biff says about Joshua’s sermons:

“Joshua's ministry was three years of preaching, sometimes three times a             day, and although there were some high and low points, I could never remember the sermons word for word, but here's the gist of almost every sermon I ever heard Joshua give.             You should be nice to people, even creeps.             And if you:             a) believed that Joshua was the Son of God (and)             b) he had come to save you from sin (and)             c) acknowledged the Holy Spirit within you (became as a little child, he                  would say) (and)

                         d) didn't blaspheme the Holy Ghost (see c)                         then you would:                                     e) live forever                                     f) someplace nice                                     g) probably heaven                                                 However, if you:                                                 h) sinned (and/or)                                                 i) were a hypocrite (and/or)                                                 j) valued things over people (and)                                                 k) didn't do a, b, c, and d,                                                 then you were:…”^[6]             l) a word I can’t use in church.

             Beyond being funny, Moore hits on something about the Sermon on the Mount that’s important to be mindful of with this morning’s verses. When Matthew wrote his gospel, he was not only “drawing from numerous sources some forty years after Jesus’ ministry…[he wasn’t aiming] to give us a blow-by-blow account of one of Jesus’ sermons. Instead, Matthew was trying to “capture and present…the essence of Jesus’ ministry and mission.”^[7]

             I mention this to help ease some of the awkwardness of Jesus jumping from judgment to dogs to pigs to asking, seeking, knocking, and finally the Golden Rule. As David Lose puts it so well, “rather than wonder why Jesus isn’t staying on topic…we might instead wonder how these snippets lend insight into the heart of Jesus’ ministry.”

             In verse 7, we hear Jesus' beautiful words, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you…” These words, along with the Golden Rule in verse 12, are instructive and relational. They come from a God who isn’t far off in heaven, but “who is as close to us as a beloved parent to their child, wanting what’s best for their child.”^[8] You know as well as I do this doesn’t mean that God’s a vending machine, but rather one with whom we’re in a relationship. Because of this relationship, we learn to “trust that God doesn’t necessarily give us all we ask, but what we need.”^[9]

             And with this in mind, we can see that despite the seemingly unconnected parts of this sermon, the theme that’s woven throughout is Jesus calling us to “evaluate our priorities [and] take stock of what’s most important.”^[10] To turn to God for those things, and to treat others as the most important thing, because that’s how Jesus treats everyone he encounters. As David Lose notes, “Throughout [these chapters] Jesus invites us to reconsider what we have determined – or perhaps what the world has told us – is most important in light of the promise of God’s coming kingdom.”^[11]

             The Good News this morning, my friends, is that Jesus invites us to evaluate our priorities and to live relationally because that’s at the heart of each priority within his sermon. Don’t judge, treat others how you wanted to be treated, think about the words you use, they have power, turn the other cheek; the sum of all the parts of the Sermon on the Mount is this: “honor and tend [your] relationship with God by honoring and tending [your] relationships with others. Why? Because this is the heart of the law and prophets.”^[12]

             This is a relationship we tend by praying for our Southern Baptist brothers and sisters in this dark moment. For those hurt by the church and those unwilling to admit how hurtful the church can be. We tend this relationship by praying for our Methodist brothers and sisters as they face a potentially divisive meeting in the coming weeks. We tend this relationship by being honest about when our judgments aren’t fair or building unnecessary walls between us. We do this by continually seeking to be the people God calls us to be.

^[1] Rolph Jacobson, Kathryn Schifferdecker and Craig Koester, “NL Podcast 348: The Golden Rule” from Working Preacher.org Narrative Lectionary Podcast, February 2, 2019.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Ibid.

^[6] Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal.

^[7] David Lose, “Matthew 7:6-12” from …in the Meantime. February 22, 2014.

^[8] Rolph Jacobson, Kathryn Schifferdecker and Craig Koester, ibid.

^[9] Ibid.

^[10] Lose, ibid.

^[11] Ibid.

^[12] Ibid.